Perhaps I am extremely unlucky. Sounds sometimes breaks down both for built-in soundcard on the mobo, and an external USB DAC (which main function is to record guitar but I tested how it could work for output because I can).By the way do you think it's worth it to try replacing the kernel with some kind of "realtime" versions as described here https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuStudio/RealTimeKernel to see if it makes the problem less frequent at least?

That does sound very strange, and I'm afraid it's not something where I am aware of an easy solution. Maybe it's some sort of hardware conflict, maybe something particular to your hardware. I'm not sure what the best venue for help is, if the Ubuntu forums aren't helpful.

I don't think a realtime kernel will help, this seems like something else.

This is an anecdote about my own situation. I use one of those USB plug-in headphone amplifiers. It works great, except the Linux volume controls initially worked very poorly. Basically, the specific USB headphone amp that I use isn't quite 100% supported (It is an audioengine D3 -- I think.) Anyway, I found a driver/kernel patch to fix the volume control issue, and every kernel that I update to needs the patch. They still don't support it in the mainline kernel, but being a kernel developer of one kind or another since the late 1970's, it is no biggie for me to patch the kernel. (I update to the latest Linux development kernel -- way ahead of normal releases -- about once a month, unless I am in play-with-kernel mode, then I do it over and over again.) Bottom line is that Linux does tend to have spotty support for less than 100% mainstream HW, but when it does have support, it is usally either pretty good, or passable.Windows is really good when you just want something to work -- perhaps suboptimally, perhaps more slowly, or perhaps irritatingly esp when the system is doing one of those irritating upates, but it does work most of the time.Linux is really good if you want something that works knifedge-good. I mean, it will generally give you everything that your CPU and system can give you in performance, and when the software works -- it is second-to-none. However, Linux does often require care and feeding unless you choose hardware that is well known by the developers.

I LIKE using Linux (I wish it was FreeBSD, but that is ancient history), and I am generally satisfied when I use it because I am not usually waiting or frustrated because of an eccentric or poor design concept (e.g. Windows being infested with Belady's anomaly for a decade before being improved.)I tolerate using Windows because it is what a lot of people use, and they are happy with it. If I write a piece of software, I will be able to benefit more people if I write it to be able to run on Windows.It would be nice if the world used a Unix clone, and there was a super good GUI from day one so that more people would have been able to adopt it early on. We don't live in that world...

Perhaps I am extremely unlucky. Sounds sometimes breaks down both for built-in soundcard on the mobo, and an external USB DAC (which main function is to record guitar but I tested how it could work for output because I can).By the way do you think it's worth it to try replacing the kernel with some kind of "realtime" versions as described here https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuStudio/RealTimeKernel to see if it makes the problem less frequent at least?

That does sound very strange, and I'm afraid it's not something where I am aware of an easy solution. Maybe it's some sort of hardware conflict, maybe something particular to your hardware. I'm not sure what the best venue for help is, if the Ubuntu forums aren't helpful.

I don't think a realtime kernel will help, this seems like something else.

Last post by punkrockdude - Today at 20:04
What reample-method is used in your /etc/pulseaudio/daemon.conf file? If you use speex-float-NUMBER then don't use 10 or 9 if your computer is not to fast because it can cause dropouts. Another option is to try the tsched method that you can find if you search for "pulseaudio tsched".

I have been looking at the Xduoo X3 on the Net. How does a person tell the difference between version 1 &2?I would like to put Rockbox on the player, but not sure which version the build on Rockbox.org is for, or is it for both?

Joe

Confusingly, there's an X3 (3 sub-versions) and an X3 II, the former is Rockbox-able, the latter (I think, not sure) is not. The mark II has a bigger screen (colour?), Bluetooth, an equaliser in stock firmware and so on. The original X3 has none of those and is out of production, though probably still available. I believe that the version of Rockbox to be found on Xvortex's site (Google it) is suitable for all 3 incarnations of the first model (i.e. not the mark II). Hopefully you're not even more confused now!

Last post by Sandrine - Today at 19:24
This add-on works pretty well for me. Sure, Picard adds richer tags but is far from easy to handle. The only thing that this plugin doesn't get right is to add the "albumartist" tag always. At the moment, when "artist" is found, "albumartist" is left empty. This leads to problems with other software.

Last post by Case - Today at 19:05
I had to rewrite the wrapping logic to fix that but frankly it was stupidly implemented earlier. CUE inputs should now work with Converter. The rewrite also allowed me to remove old HLS stream related hack I had in place.

I think this is very likely a driver issue. I have not had a single issue with Pulseaudio in years, on multiple machines with onboard audio, USB DACs, S/PDIF output, DisplayPort/HDMI output, you name it.

Perhaps I am extremely unlucky. Sounds sometimes breaks down both for built-in soundcard on the mobo, and an external USB DAC (which main function is to record guitar but I tested how it could work for output because I can).By the way do you think it's worth it to try replacing the kernel with some kind of "realtime" versions as described here https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuStudio/RealTimeKernel to see if it makes the problem less frequent at least?

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There are still distros where you can choose not to use it.

Idk if this is a good investment of time to try different distros now, I have too low IQ (and so I chose the "easiest" way because of that) so it'll probably take too much time. Maybe I'll do some testing from live images without installing, AFAIK they should work exactly as the "real thing".

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Just as a reminder, let’s leave commentary about sound quality that is not derived from proper scientifically contolled tests out of the discussion please.

This one isn't about quality though; when sound completely disappears or becomes replaced with noise very vaguely resembling what it should have been. Am I right?